Reviews & Analysis

Record-breaking fire seasons are becoming the new normal, prompting calls for land management and policy reforms. This Perspective clarifies different types of resilience to wildfire to prioritize efforts to better coexist with increasingly fire-prone conditions.

Meat is an important source of greenhouse-gas emissions, but not enough people are giving it up. A new model integrates diets, land use and climate change to explore the potential and implications of mass adoption of vegetarian diets.

Radiative cooling can be used to reduce building air-conditioning requirements. In urban environments, nearby buildings partially block access to the sky, which hinders radiative cooling, but a thermal beam-shaping design can help solve this problem.

The conservation of Boswellia papyrifera, a dryland tree from the Horn of Africa and a source of frankincense, conflicts with growing use. A new study finds impending collapse of this iconic tree throughout its range, prioritizing the need to restrict uncontrolled tapping and cattle herding.

Aquifers and groundwater resources are a critical lifeline for billions of people. Drilling deeper wells is one adaptive strategy to lower groundwater, but uncertainty plagues every aspect of dynamic aquifer systems.

In the Anthropocene, our global influence extends to risks. This Perspective argues for including human–environment interactions in our understanding of systemic risks and considers four illustrative case studies, including sea-level rise and megacities.

The international community has committed to fight climate change and achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Here the authors assess evidence about the relationships between the two agendas and discuss the need of deeper interdisciplinary efforts to understand these relationships.

The long-term role of mountains as water providers to lowlands is threatened by shrinking glaciers due to anthropogenic climate change. Modelling this dependence and uncovering past indigenous responses can inform adaptive responses.

Understanding how individuals shift to diets with much smaller ecological footprints may help us in persuading more people to change their habits and transition to more sustainable food systems. Online interactions provide important answers.

Managing the interactions and impacts of scaled-up solar energy production will require understanding of the relationships between technological and ecological systems. This Perspective proposes a framework that could help engineer beneficial outcomes from an energy transition.

Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) is critical for conservation. Yet, gaps in published research on ILK might bias assessments that largely rely on it. Such fragmented documentation calls for alternative approaches to bring ILK into conservation.

A review of studies on exposure to elevated CO₂ concentrations in air suggests that health damages, such as inflammation or reductions in cognitive abilities, can occur at levels as low as 1,000 ppm.

Fairtrade and other voluntary sustainability standards are increasingly common in the food sector. Evidence shows that the benefits of such standards on the poorest people are minimal.

It has long been observed that roads clear the way to deforestation in the tropics. Viewing deforestation scars in the Congo Basin from space, we can now model the impact roads have both inside and outside logging concessions.

Understanding how people and ecosystems are connected is a continuing and vital challenge. This Perspective suggests many environmental problems revolve around common core challenges and advocates using network approaches that acknowledge key underlying assumptions.

Sanitation is usually considered just an engineering and public health issue. This Perspective suggests avenues by which recoverable resources can enhance ecosystem services, such as provisioning nutrients for food production, and suggests synergies that can promote sustainable development.

Ozone depletion has altered conditions at the Earth’s surface and interacts with climate change. This Review assesses the effects on humans and ecosystems, including implications for food and water security, and the mitigating and ongoing influence of the Montreal Protocol.

Ecosystem-service assessments often fail to account for groundwater’s role in the ecosystem. Whether groundwater is important for these services depends strongly on the assessment scale and the local context.

Population growth and economic development affect and are affected by infectious diseases and food production. This Review synthesizes understanding about the links between emerging infectious diseases and food production, finding strong associations worldwide.

Review of how a multilateral negotiation platform on biodiversity is championing diversity in both participants (by gender and ethnic groups) and forms of knowledge, such as traditional or indigenous.